


Postulates

by AMarguerite



Series: Elements [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 02:36:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3340433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre's family is not so pleased with Combeferre's decision to quit the Polytechnique for the medical school. Fortunately, Enjolras is there to help Combeferre stick with his decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Postulates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oilan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oilan/gifts).



> Based on this picture by Oilan: http://oilan.tumblr.com/post/101233807858.

Combeferre always felt uncomfortable at weddings. He often felt that all the spectacle, the painstaking procession from civil ceremony to the signing of the contract to the ceremony at church, was less about a rational fellowship of equals and more about business.

“Your mind’s too busy,” said the eldest of his sisters, Marie-Anne when he ventured to air his discomfort. “You must always be pulling things to pieces to try and reason out how they work. Weddings aren’t like the intestines of a snake or something. They’re just parties. I wish you would try and enjoy yourself.”

“It isn’t just a party,” Combeferre protested. “Our cousin is creating a new life for herself by this action—”

Marie-Anne sighed. “Yes, and? Every woman marries if she can manage it. Really, you’re as bad as mother—”

“—but even the language of it, the language you yourself use, of ‘management’— do you not hear how little that takes into account Gabrielle’s feelings? Does she love this fellow?”

Marie-Anne scowled at him. “I wish you had stayed at the Polytechnique, it might have done you some good to be forced to action.”

Combeferre lapsed into silence and kept his peace thereafter. Surrounded by the old objects of childhood, Combeferre had felt almost as out of place as he had in his Polytechnique uniform. In Paris, and in Enjolras’s apartment, where he had been staying since leaving the Polytechnique, everything had seemed right. But when he arrived home, not in his red and black uniform, but in a nondescript brown coat, everyone had stared at him. He found himself thinking of a line from his new friend Jehan’s latest poetic ode: he was a quote out of context. Everyone saw only the change, not the process.

If his father had been less busy, Combeferre would have felt more at ease, but as it was M. Combeferre was a lawyer and busy helping with the wedding contract. Combeferre could only shield himself from the disapprobation of his relations with the memory of his father saying mildly, at dinner, “And all this after everyone feared the Polytechnique would be too much! You all had better stop denigrating the medical school before Grandpere Combeferre arrives. He may no longer be practicing medicine, but he went through the same training our Jacques-Étienne now undertakes.”

Combeferre’s mother was still put out, as were all the various aunts, uncles and cousins from her side of the family. They had had grander ambitions for Combeferre than he had had for himself. After too much conversation, Combeferre began to doubt his choice and grew gloomy. Even Gabrielle, the cousin who was getting married, took time out of her busy schedule to make her displeasure known.

“It’s hard enough getting everyone to focus on one event at a time,” she complained to Combeferre, when she found him in the apple orchard, morosely poking at windfalls with a stick. “If you have ever met a more easily distracted family I shall grow distracted myself. I don’t know why you didn’t just wear your uniform for the weekend, and then tell your parents about it afterwards. You have two weeks of vacation to accustom them to the news.” She shook her head at him. “Jacques-Étienne, I love you like a brother, for all the you are only my cousin, and I know you to be some strange sort of genius, but really!”

It had not occurred to Combeferre to obscure the truth from his parents. He had dutifully finished up his year at the Polytechnique and quit the school at the fall break. When he returned to Paris with all the other students returning from their farms, he would enter the medical school. It had seemed easier to leave the Combeferre of the Polytechnique behind in Paris, waded up in a trunk with his old uniform.

But Gabrielle saw she had embarrassed him. She patted his arm. “Poor Jacques-Étienne. I forget your education was not like mine. You were never taught these things!”

It was always difficult for Combeferre to admit ignorance in anything, but he had brought an unnecessary complication to Gabrielle’s wedding and so humbled himself. “I am sorry, Gabrielle. I must confess that I do not know how to ameliorate the situation.”

“Give them something else to talk about,” replied Gabrielle. “Your sister Marie-Anne is almost old enough for beaux. Do you have any friends you can invite down?”

“Enjolras,” said Combeferre, dubiously, “but he is not… looking for a wife. He is two years younger than I am.”

“He doesn’t need to marry her,” said Felicite, agreeably, “we just need to insinuate it and then everyone will forget about your quitting the Polytechnique.”

“You’ve a Machiavellian cast of mind, at times,” replied Combeferre.

Gabrielle preened. “I know! It is a pity I have already approached the one piece of business I can do in my own name. I am capable of such feats of pragmaticism.”

Combeferre had to admit it was a great comfort to have Enjolras there, particularly during the very long party for the wedding contract. His family had the habit of seizing upon things and discussing them to death, a habit Combeferre noticed in himself, often enough, but hypocritically found irritating in other people. It was a relief to talk to Enjolras, who moved easily from topic to topic, association to association. There was a depth and breath to their conversation that pulled Combeferre out of the pit of gloom and self-doubt in which he had wallowed since coming home.

“It was good of you to come,” said Combeferre, as they were crowded into a window. Everyone else was streaming into the room where Gabrielle and her fiance would sign the contract, jostling for position.

Enjolras glanced at Combeferre and said, a little amused, “Did you really think I wouldn’t?”

He said it in such a way that Combeferre felt almost ashamed of how much he had overthought the initial invitation. Would Enjolras understand or be offended by Gabrielle’s stratagems? Would he be as uncomfortable or bored as Combeferre? Would he, always so reserved, find so large a party overwhelming? The equality of their friendship was still something new and delicate, created out of Combeferre’s panicked response at the idea of being sent to Algeria, and untried since then. “Well. You do not know anyone else here, and I did not know how much you liked weddings—”

“I came for your sake alone,” said Enjolras, in the half-joking, half-serious tone he had learnt from Courfeyrac. “Friend Combeferre, do not think I would shrink from battle and leave you surrounded.”

“It is a battle, isn’t it?” Combeferre replied, with a laugh. “The charge has been sounded, all go forward.”

The doorway out of the room was still jammed; Combeferre turned his attention to the apple tree outside. He wished he had only come back to help with the harvest. No one would have questioned his lack of uniform then, and there were always such alarms over the weather changing that his news could have been distractedly accepted and then immediately forgotten. How unpleasant it had been, to be so constantly vivisected in a place he had previously associated with the security and safety of a happy childhood.

Combeferre leaned his forehead against the glass, knocking his glasses askew. He did not care enough to fix them. He sighed.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Have you ever had a conception of yourself that no one else sees?” asked Combeferre.

“I cannot say I reflect overmuch on myself,” replied Enjolras, “but I think I understand you. It is…” He paused, choosing his words carefully, as Combeferre liked to choose apples as a child, surveying them all with hand outstretched ,the green leaves brushing against his fingertips. “When you have arrived at a difficult conclusion, and look around to see that no one else has followed you on the journey—”

“Yes.” Combeferre opened his eyes and raised his head. His reflection was blurry and distorted in the window. Enjolras reached up and almost absently pulled on the part of the eyeglass frame that curved around Combeferre’s ear. His sight was restored. “But you have been along a similar path, I think. At least, you have seen mine. It was… it was hard then. I did not expect to be harder now.”

Enjolras drew him close.

Comebferre had not known how badly he needed to be comforted until he found himself embraced. He closed his eyes and relaxed against Enjolras.

“I see you as you would see yourself,” Enjolras murmured against Combeferre’s brow. “You need only look to me if you are uncertain.”

Combeferre smiled a little, and took off his glasses so they would not smudge. “I am certain of nothing.”

But, he thought, as they lingered behind the crowd, caught up in deeper truths known only to themselves, Combeferre thought that in this, at least, he could not doubt.


End file.
